Peer-Led Team Learning in General Chemistry
Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a collaborative learning technique that has been used on many college campuses, particularly in large lecture classes in departments of chemistry. Several studies have shown that PLTL results in improved learning (Gafney a
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Peer-Led Team Learning in General Chemistry Keith Sawyer, Regina Frey, and Patrick Brown
Introduction There is now a consensus in science education research that the most effective learning environments are those in which students engage in productive, collaborative discourse to build knowledge (e.g., American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1989; National Research Council [NRC], 1996). Knowledge building occurs when students engage in collaborative conversations intended to advance both individual understanding and the collective knowledge of the group in pursuit of a common goal (Bereiter, 2002; Engle & Conant, 2002; Rogoff, Matusov, & White, 1996). Many learning scientists have shown that engaging in collaborative discourse contributes to deeper conceptual understanding, greater transferability of knowledge, and better retention (Engle & Conant, 2002; Greeno, 2006; Sawyer, 2006; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). However, promoting collaboration among undergraduate students is a challenge because many science courses are large lectures that are primarily focused on individual learning (Seymour & Hewitt, 1994). As a result, there has been very little research on students’ collaborative discourse practices in college science settings. This chapter describes the setting and context of the discourse that occurs during Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) in first-year General Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. PLTL is designed to facilitate chemistry literacy and success for all students, not only for chemistry majors, by supplementing the lecture with formalized study groups that provide opportunities for active and collaborative K. Sawyer (*) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. Frey Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA P. Brown DuBray Middle School, Fort Zumwalt School District, St Peters, MO, USA D.D. Suthers et al. (eds.), Productive Multivocality in the Analysis of Group Interactions, Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series 16, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-8960-3_9, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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learning (Gosser et al., 2001; Gosser & Roth, 1998; Sarquis et al., 2001; Siebert & McIntosh, 2001). Peer leaders are selected from undergraduate students who have received an A in the class previously. A peer leader is assigned to a group of six to eight students who meet for 2 h each weekend to solve chemistry problems designed by the course instructors. Neither the peer leader nor the students are given the solutions to the problems, because the goal of the session is not to get the correct answer; rather, it is to provide opportunities for engaging in problem solving while discussing the concepts used in the problem. The PLTL structure implemented at Washington University in St. Louis has been previously described in Brown, Sawyer, and Frey (2010) and Hockings, DeAngelis, and Frey (2008).
Literature Review PLTL was inspired by educational research demonstrating that cooperat
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